Book Reviews/A review of Jindřich Jašík's Journey out of Schizophrenia

This short article by Dan Polansky is a cursory critical review of the book by Jindřich Jašík Journey out of Schizophrenia, 2019. The book was published in Czech and English; the Czech original title is Cesta ze schizofrenie. A preview of the English publication is available in Google Books. My estimate is that the book is much better available for purchase to Czech readers than English readers, so it may turn out this review will be more useful for them. Nonetheless, some of the topics and points made here may be interesting for international audience.

Good things and problematic things:

1) (Problematic) The book has the word schizophrenia in the title, but the author reports on the first pages that it is not clear that he has schizophrenia and that he had some symptoms of bipolar disorder.^[1] It may turn out that the author has a condition that different psychiatrists would rank as bipolar disorder (in which psychosis is often present per Bipolar disorder and psychosis) or at least psychoaffective disorder. And then, it may turn out that the author has a relatively mild form of serious mental illness (SMI) with a psychotic component (hallucinations, delusions) and an affective component (mania, hypomania, depression), which could explain why his drug-free autotherapy works well for him while it may not work so well for people with a more serious form of SMI, with different composition of elementary signs (halluciations, delusions, disorganized thinking, executive dysfunction, manic or hypomanic phases, depressive phases, etc.) This is a crucial point for the readers who would like to use Jašík's method to self-treat their condition that someone has diagnosed as schizophrenia. Much more important than whether the SMI belongs to the arguably non-existent (arbitrarily carved out) entities "schizophrenia" (formerly "dementia praecox") and "bipolar disorder" (formerly "maniodepressive psychosis") is whether the SMI is mild and whether it has components that can respond to cognitive psychotherapy, e.g. delusions (for the purpose of psychiatric diagnosis, blatantly wrong beliefs that are not culturally accepted).

2) (Problematic) The book has no list of used literature and no inline references. This presents a room for improvement since the book makes multiple statements that the author must have learned from literature rather than experience and deliberation, but we do not know which literature. For instance: "After decades of research, no schizophrenic gene has been found, nor has the dopamine hypothesis been proved." On the other hand, the reader can take these statements and try to verify them for themselves, so they are not without value.

3) (Problematic) Expanding on the above, there seems to be no or very little acknowledgement of the serious people who did serious publishing work critical of psychiatry, e.g. Whitaker, Moncrieff and Gøtzsche. On the other hand, the reader can find out about these using the Internet.

4) (Good) I find the authentic report of Jašík's experience valuable. This is reporting things he positively knows (his own experience) rather than speculations.

5) (Good) I find the copy of Jašík's medical report valuable. It presents evidence against Czech psychiatry. It reveals part of the problematic language and problematic thinking on part of psychiatrists, as well as the suspect polypharmacy (using a coctail of drugs). And thus: "Therapy: Risperdal, Zolpidem, Rivotril, Nozinan, Cisordinol Acutar, Akineton, Zyprexa Velotab, Risperdal Consta, regime therapy, supportive psychotherapy."^[2]

6) (Good) I find Jašík's description of his self-treatment method worthwhile at least as a look into someone's mind.

7) (Good) There are many interesting points, e.g. "After decades of research, no schizophrenic gene has been found, nor has the dopamine hypothesis been proved." (It would be even better if they were properly referenced, as mentioned above.)

Verdict: the book seems to be a worthwhile read if one applies the appropriate caution.

Notes and references

↑ The author states: "However, I don't really think the specific diagnosis matters, as this book may be beneficial to people with various psychiatric diagnoses. Before I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, not only had I suffered from all kinds of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders, but also from a bipolar disorder, a spiritual crisis and most likely from many other disorders I'm not even aware of."
↑ Journey out of Schizophrenia, books.google.com

Book Reviews/A review of Jindřich Jašík's Journey out of Schizophrenia

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